Keys and agents

You create and revoke your own keys. Approving a registered agent, suspending one, and choosing what it may do are admin tasks.

#Your keys

The tab is API keys if you are an admin and My keys otherwise. Either way you see the keys you minted, and an admin sees everyone's.

1. 1

   Choose Create key and name it.

   Name it for the machine and the coding agent it will live on, so a key you later want to revoke is the one you can pick out.
2. 2

   Set Expires.

   Never, 30 days, 90 days or 1 year. An expiring key is the safer choice on a laptop.
3. 3

   Copy the key and paste it into your coding agent.

   This is the only time the key is shown. Coding agents has the snippet for each one.

The Keys table lists each key with its owner, its prefix, when it was last used and whether it is still live. Last used is what tells you a key is still in service, or was left behind on a machine you no longer have.

Revoking a key stops it working. Keys are scoped to one person and one workspace and are stored hashed, so a key gives its holder what that person can already do, and no more.

#Registered agents

Some coding agents register themselves rather than carrying a key you minted. One that does appears under Awaiting approval, and does nothing until an admin approves it.

Approving one takes two decisions: who the registered agent acts for, and which scopes it needs. Tick only the scopes it will use, because the scopes are the list of what it is allowed to ask for.

#What a registered agent can do

A registered agent's authority is its scopes and its owner's permissions together, checked on every call and for every repository. A registered agent acting for a developer reaches what that developer reaches, narrowed again to the scopes you ticked.

So changing the owner's role changes what the registered agent can do, from its next call. Roles and permissions explains where those permissions come from.

#Suspending one

Suspend stops a registered agent acting and keeps it in the list, and Reinstate puts it back. Each row shows who the registered agent acts for and how many scopes it has, which is what you read before either.